Media Development at a Crossroads: Power, Funding, and Futures Beyond the Donor Era — PRE-CONFERENCE CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
The IAMCR Media Sector Development Working Group, in partnership with the University College Dublin Clinton Institute, invites contributions to a pre-conference on 27 June head of IAMCR 2026 in Dublin, Ireland.
Convened by Dr. Susan Abbott (University of Colorado Boulder), Dr. Nicholas Benequista (National Endowment for Democracy), Professor Winston Mano (University of Westminster), and Professor Jairo Lugo-Ocando (University of Sharjah), and co-organized with Professor Liam Kennedy and Professor Scott Lucas (UCD Clinton Institute), this gathering brings together scholars, practitioners, donors and policy thinkers to interrogate a field in transition.
Media development is at a turning point. For over three decades, donor funding has shaped independent media support globally, but that model is now under severe strain as aid budgets contract, philanthropy fragments, and geopolitical and platform power intensifies. At the same time, new framings such as “information integrity,” “digital democracy,” and “public interest media” are emerging—often without clear theoretical or empirical grounding.
This pre-conference asks a central question: what happens to media development in a post-aid world?
Participants will engage with urgent questions around shrinking funding ecosystems, shifting power and influence, the rise of platform governance, and the future of rights-based media support. Rather than traditional panels, the event prioritizes roundtables, provocations, comparative reflections, and collaborative working sessions designed to generate new thinking across research and practice.
We welcome proposals from scholars, practitioners, donors and intermediaries working across media development, journalism support, policy, and communication rights, with a strong emphasis on Global South and early-career perspectives.
The aim is to collectively rethink how media development is funded, framed and practised—and what a post-donor, rights-based future might look like in practice.